Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

Long gone are the roasted vegetable and grain-filled power bowls of winter. Lately, we've been filling our plates with chopped salads jam-packed with cold diced raw vegetables, some sort of protein, a melange of fresh herbs and spices and a citrus or fruit-spiked creamy dressing to pull it all together. The finished dish is popped in the fridge until chilled, and what results is a light, airy and refreshing meal that hits the spot when you can't bother being weighed down by heavy meals in the summer.

This Mediterranean chickpea salad is spot on.  In fact, there was a time in my life that I could consume a dish just like this weekly. During one particular stint, in which I found myself taking a helicopter to work in a small New England city, former colleagues fell victim to my bi-weekly visits to one Mediterranean restaurant for my fix of chickpeas, good olives and the divine matrimony of tahini and lemon that just makes these dishes so right. If you don't already have these classic flavors together in your repertoire, then this recipe is dedicated to you.

Chickpeas, like all legumes, are a great source of fiber and vegetarian protein. In this salad, they're paired with heaps of parsley, which is one of the greatest detoxifying and vitamin-filled herbs out there. You could also add in mint or cilantro to your liking, because when it comes to herbs, I truly believe that the more the merrier. I've also chopped in tomato, cucumber, pitted kalamata olives and green onions, which makes this dish nearly like a grain-less tabbouleh of sorts. It's then topped with dressing that marries that wonderful tahini and lemon combination with cumin, smoky paprika and Pink Himalayan salt. I recommend pairing with chopped kale or a flatbread to make it a meal. And, if you include a nicely bodied glass of red wine, I think you might just have the perfect early summer evening meal. 

Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

2 cups of cooked chickpeas

1 ripe tomato

1/4 cup kalamata olives, chopped

1 small red onion, diced finely

1 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped

1/2 cucumber, quartered and chopped

For dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon tahini

2 tablespoons lemon juice (I'm a big lemon fan, so adjust this to taste)

1 1/2 teaspoons cumin

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon Pink Himalayan salt

Combine all salad ingredients in a bowl and toss. In a blender or food processor, blend together olive oil, tahini, lemon, salt, cumin, and paprika until smooth. Pour dressing over salad and mix until completely covered.

Happy weekend...

Happy Friday! It has been a wonderful and busy week. I'm really excited about this weekend, as I'll be spending it in the next intensive weekend for my coaching certification. 

• Listening to an awesome podcast on meditation, ritual, and celebrating and practicing gratitude from Rich Roll, featuring tea and Zen master Wude. Thanks to the lovely M. for sharing this! 
• Reading the insightful book WomanCode, which is a great guide for helping women understand just how their bodies work...and how to navigate and manage hormonal changes, cycles, and health.  
• And finally, a gorgeous quote from a post by Sharon Salzberg on "The Challenges of Seeing Meditation Only Through a Scientific Lens" where she explores the effects of meditation on the mind, but also on our souls:

"We need to remember to look at our lives for signs — to consider how we are with our partners, our children, our colleagues at work, or even with strangers. Even more importantly, we need to look at how we speak to ourselves when we have made a mistake: do we blame ourselves, or recognize our capacity for resilience, our ongoing ability to begin again."

Finding Time for Peace

Our days, by nature, are busy. Many of us spend our weeks, months, and years moving and grooving at work, with our families, at events, or in transit. The joys of juggling can be a blessing, akin to the adage that too much business is better than having no business at all. But amidst such movement, it becomes very easy to forget the most basic of tasks on our to-do lists, let alone remember to just breathe.

Recently, something that I've continued to work on in my own life is making the time and space for these moments of peace - a stretch of time where I can hit the pause button and bring myself to the present - clearing my mind, and relishing in a few good mindful breaths before pressing play again on the day. Through experience, I've learned about the power in having a little pause in thinking (aka planning, pondering, worrying, or listening to my own inner critic tell me her opinion) and how it has really helped me use my brain more effectively when I need to again. I'm more mindful about how I create plans and work towards goals. I also sleep better, worry less, and breath a bit easier. 

While in theory, making this space to move into the "now" is technically a meditation, the time and place might not resemble what many might view as the stereotypical act. And within that lies the beauty of it all. 

Building a routine meditation is a personal and individual act. For some, meditation may appear to take place in the classic Zen sitting style - seated lotus position, rear lifted and eyes at a soft gaze for a length of time. But for many people, incorporating that type of practice into their lives is neither practical nor desirable, and may not even be the best way to connect with the present at all. If this is something that has deterred you from exploring meditation, I'd invite you to consider that the many ways to incorporate these spaces of peace and mindfulness into your life, and even begin to schedule it into your day. 

Over the past year, through a joyful, challenging, and at times, really freaking frustrating, play with meditation, mantras, and mudras, I've learned about the many methods of making space within my mind. I've shared this with friends, praising the wonders of deep belly breathing and quiet serenity I've discovered during some seriously stressful times. With practice, I've learned what works best for me (a series of deep belly breaths, a simple body scan, and a mantra or two) and how to expand or shorten my practice given the availability of time. I've learned to be gentle on myself as I work to explore meditation, and to remind myself that time and space is a gift that can be found anywhere and anytime. 

The good news is, however you choose to incorporate meditative moments, the benefits remain. Read more about the different types of meditation via The Chopra Center, the Institute for Noetic Sciences, and Gaiam. For more on the benefits of meditation, check out Emma Seppälä's "20 Scientific Reasons to Start Meditating Today."

Weekly Words: "Moving Your Emotions in a Positive Direction"

"Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness." The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.

It is crucial to understand that these three senses of emotion are different and are not necessarily tightly linked. While it is desirable to be happy in all three senses, this does not always happen. It is possible to be proud and satisfied about the past, for example, but to be sour in the present and pessimistic about the future. Similarly, it is possible to have many pleasures in the present, but be bitter about the past and hopeless about the future. By learning about each of the three different kinds of happiness, you can move your emotions in a positive direction by changing how you feel about your past, how you think about the future, and how you experience the present."

- Martin E. P. Seligman

Happy weekend...

Happy June weekend! It has been a wonderful, fruitful week, and I'm looking forward to loving up my entire extended family this weekend. I hope you have a gorgeous few days as well. Here are a few things that I've been loving lately:

• Throwing back to the nineties amidst a recent Toad the Wet Sprocket kick.
• Loving Outside magazine's article "Man vs. Food" because even though it's a few years old, it still resonates. And because our diet looks eerily similar to that of the author.
• Continuing to meditate on the welcomed new quiet peace in my life with this appropriately timed piece from Pico Iyer on "The Art of Stillness." 
• And finally, a sexy poem from Billy Collins that somehow has always wrapped together many deep vibes and memories I hold from Cape Cod and Newport summers gone by:

"You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.
You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clipboard house
in the early hours of morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby."

Natural Summertime Skincare Essentials

It's no surprise that with the advent of summer comes the need to pay extra attention to your skincare routine. Below, I've lined up the power players in my summer beauty game after a few weeks of heat.

(Clockwise, from Top Left)

A floral water to hydrate. Strong summer sun zaps the moisture from your skin. I like to give my skin a spritz morning and night, followed by my daily and evening serums. Two favorites in my rotation are Evan Healy's Rose Geranium HydroSoul and the Heritage Store's classic Rosewater & Glycerin spray.

An easy-to-reapply sunscreen for the face and décolletage, like Mineral Fusion's Brush On Sun Defense. I swipe this on before leaving the house and keep it in my purse to reapply as needed.

A toner for greasy times. It's likely that you get a little schvitzy in the summer. I like to do a midday facial cleanse using the delicious Neroli Rose Facial Toner from Brooklyn-duo big & Baby, to keep excess oil at bay. 

A natural deodorant that actually works. And hands down, Meow Meow Tweet's Baking Soda Free Deodorant Cream is the only one I've found that doesn't irritate sensitive pits AND smells divine, thanks to grapefruit and sweet orange essential oils. 

A good natural sunscreen to protect your body. This is an essential, and with more exposed limbs throughout the season, you shouldn't go without it. I like local New England company Badger's All-Natural Sunscreen. 

A great refillable water bottle, like the clean and green bkr Bottle. I firmly believe that glowing skin starts from within, and no season requires more agua-intake than summer. To calculate how many ounces of water you should drink a day, divide your weight by two, and then add another twenty ounces for every thirty minutes of exercise or hour spent in the great outdoor heat.

Effecting Change in Our Lives

Last week, I spoke to a peer about how she was doing after a particularly busy period in her life. Her energy was low - I could hear it in every syllable as she managed to share a few matter-of-fact details about having a chocked full schedule and wanting to make changes. Even though we weren't face to face, I could feel a dark cloud hanging over her, bearing weight on her mood, motivation, and happiness.

Change doesn't happen over night - this is a phrase that has been engrained in many of our minds. And in many cases, it's true. Good, sustainable change, for communities, companies and sports teams, comes after deep evaluation, a well-defined approach, careful measurement and iteration after iteration. For people, this can be true as well. In many circumstances, the framework for building strategies and goals that I shared with Financial Services companies could work extremely well for an individual desiring the type of change that I was an expert on. But the thing is - it wouldn't be their change.

Much like selling a product, or getting buy-in from a leader, someone will not own the act of making change until it's theirs. In fact, the core difference in coaching versus consulting someone on something is that rather than sharing a plan and an approach to effect change, you guide someone to find their own desired destination, and empower them to build the map to lead themselves there. Empowerment is the key word here. One can only send all their good juju to another person so much - cheerleaders aren't the ones generally playing the game.

As I listened to my friend last week, I knew I needed to employ some key coaching tactics to elevate her energy, shift her focus, and help her start building waves to sea change. Below are a few quick tactics for doing the same when you find yourself with low energy around a decision or change: 

Quick Tips to Empower Towards Change

• Validation brings the party to the present. You are allowed to feel. Full stop. Acknowledge your emotions when they're low. I would even encourage you to sit with them for long enough for you to determine that they are separate from you. Then you can take the power back from them. As Michael A. Singer shares in Untethered Soul, "To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them." 
• Talk about what's going well. If you're in a crunch, overwhelmed or stuck, you're likely resonating at a very low frequency, which is the exact place you don't want to be in order to actually take action. Re-living your success stories or conjuring up a good moment has the effect of a smile for your inner self. After doing it for a short period of time, you may actually feel a shift in energy powerful enough to bring you to the present and help you begin to build a plan.
•  Switch on the magical thinking. What would life be like once you're living that change you so desire? How would you feel? What would be doing once you are there? Even though the focus is on the present, the same tactic you would use to help an executive take ownership of a strategy can work in your personal life. Thinking about how it would feel to actually be living the change can help raise your energy to doing, and help you buy in to your own plan for getting there. Sometimes the best way to make something happen is to sell to the most important customer: yourself.    

Weekly Words: "Keeping Quiet"

"Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go."

-  Pablo Neruda